ICL VME, >shudder<that brings back memories...
$ARGV[0] is the first paramter supplied to your script.
When you have to parse a common file format, the first response should be to search CPAN (or for a faster response, metacpan.org)for the format, there you will discover Text::CSV a module which handles all the edge cases that may arise in your data.

Welcome to Perl, you'll find it much handier to script in than scl once you get the hang of it...